xi ABSTRACT
Gisela Swara Gita Andika. Breaking the Love Law: Identity and Transgression in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. Yogyakarta: Graduate Program on English Language Studies, Sanata Dharma University, 2015.
This thesis is a study on Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. The writing of the thesis is based on Roy’s statement that the core point of her novel is about biology and transgression. Thus, this thesis focuses on Ammu, a leading character, who struggles to reach her desire under the control of a set of restrictions namely the Love Law.
Using Feminist approach as the point of view from which the novel is examined, the thesis also uses several theories to explore this topic. A theory of kinship based identity is used to explore the restrictions that come along with her identity categories. Althusser’s concept of Ideological State Apparatuses is used to see the Love Law as an internalized ideology, as well as the interpellated society among which Ammu lives. Theory of subaltern is also used to see Ammu as a subaltern although she lives in a privileged family.
The study reveals that Ammu inherits the obligation to prolong her family’s good reputation due to the identity categories she also inherits from the family. The identity categories: her being a Syrian Christian, her being an Anglophile high-caste Indian, and her being a woman consequently put her inside a jail of restrictions from reaching the object of her desire. These boundaries functioned systematically just like a law, and is referred as the Love Law in the novel. After analyzing the Love Law, it is revealed that the Love Law has failed to express humanity values. Thus, it is concluded that the Love Law transgresses Ammu’s biology instead of Ammu transgressing the Love Law.
xii ABSTRAK
Gisela Swara Gita Andika. Breaking the Love Law: Identity and Transgression in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. Yogyakarta: Graduate Program on English Language Studies, Sanata Dharma University, 2014.
Thesis ini mengkaji novel karya Arundhati Roy,The God of Small Things.Penulisan thesis ini didasari oleh pernyataan Roy sendiri bahwa intisari dari novelnya adalah mengenai dorongan biologis dan pelanggaran. Maka, thesis ini berfokus pada Ammu, seorang karakter utama, yang berjuang untuk memenuhi hasratnya di bawah kungkungan norma-norma dan larangan yang disebutLove Law.
Menggunakan pendekatan Feminis sebagai sudut pandang penalaran, thesis ini juga menggunakan beberapa teori untuk menyelami topik ini. Teori tentang identitas kekeluargaan digunakan untuk melihat larangan-larangan yang hadir bersama dengan kategori identitasnya. Konsep Ideological State Apparatuses oleh Althusser juga digunakan untuk melihat Love Law sebagai ideologi yang telah diinternalisasikan oleh masyarakat yang telah terinterpelasi, masyarakat di mana Ammu tinggal. Teori tentang subaltern juga digunakan untuk melihat Ammu sebagai subaltern walau ia berasal dari keluarga kelas atas.
Kajian ini menemukan bahwa Ammu mewarisi kewajiban ini akibat kategori-kategori identitas yang juga ia warisi dari keluarganya. Kategori-kategori identitasnya: keberadaannya sebagai seorang Kristen Siria, seorang India berkasta tinggi yang juga Anglofilia, juga keberadaannya sebagai seorang perempuan, menempatkannya dalam penjara berjeruji larangan-larangan yang menghalanginya dalam menggapai hasratnya. Larangan-larangan ini berfungsi secara sistematis seperti hukum, hukum yang di dalam novel ini disebut Love Law. Setelah menganalisa Love Law, terungkaplah bahwa Love Law adalah hukum yang telah gagal mengekspresikan nilai-nilai kemanusiaan. Maka, dapat disimpulkan bahwa Love Law-lah yang melanggar hasrat biologis Ammu, bukan Ammu yang melanggarLove Law.
i
BREAKING THE LOVE LAW:
IDENTITY AND TRANSGRESSION
IN ARUNDHATI ROY’S
THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS
A THESIS
Presented as a Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements to Obtain theMagister Humaniora (M.Hum.)Degree
in English Language Studies
by
Gisela Swara Gita Andika Student Number: 126332040
THE GRADUATE PROGRAM OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE STUDIES SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY
ii
BREAKING THE LOVE LAW:
IDENTITY AND TRANSGRESSION
IN ARUNDHATI ROY’S
THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS
by
Gisela Swara Gita Andika Student Number: 126332040
Approved by
Dr. Patrisius Mutiara Andalas, S.J.
iii
A THESIS
BREAKING THE LOVE LAW:
IDENTITY AND TRANSGRESSION
IN ARUNDHATI ROY’S
THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS
Presented by Gisela Swara Gita Andika Student Number: 126332040
Defended before the Thesis Committee and Declared Acceptable.
THESIS COMMITTEE
Chairperson : Dr. Mutiara Andalas, S.J. __________________ Secretary : Dr. Novita Dewi, M.S., M.A (Hons)__________________ Members :1.Dr. F.X. Siswadi, M.A __________________
2.Paulus Sarwoto, S.S., M.A., Ph.D.__________________
Yogyakarta, , 2015 The Graduate Program Director Sanata Dharma University
iv
STATEMENT OF WORK‘S ORIGINALITY
This is to certify that all ideas, phrases, sentences, unless otherwise stated, are the ideas, phrases, and sentences of the thesis writer. The writer understands the full consequences including degree cancellation if she took somebody else’s ideas, phrases, sentences without proper references.
Yogyakarta,
v
To love. To be loved.
To never forget your own insignificance.
To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity
of life around you.
To seek joy in the saddest places.
To pursue beauty to its lair.
To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is
simple.
To respect strength, never power. Above all to watch.
To try and understand.
To never look away. And never, never to forget.
vi
I dedicate this study
for girls who have the privilege for reading this work
in the comfort
vii
LEMBAR PERNYATAAN PERSETUJUAN
PUBLIKASI KARYA ILMIAH UNTUK KEPENTINGAN AKADEMIS
Yang bertanda tangan dibawah ini, saya mahasiswa Universitas Sanata Dharma: Nama : Gisela Swara Gita Andika
NIM : 12 6332 040
Demi pengembangan ilmu pengetahuan, saya memberikan kepada Perpustakaan Universitas Sanata Dharma karya ilmiah saya yang berjudul:
BREAKING THE LOVE LAW: IDENTITY AND TRANSGRESSION IN ARUNDHATI ROY’STHE GOD OF SMALL THINGS
beserta perangkat yang diperlukan (bila ada). Dengan demikian, saya memberikan kepada Perpustakaan Universitas Sanata Dharma hak untuk menyimpan, mengalihkan dalam bentuk media lain, mengelolanya dalam bentuk pangkalan data, mendistribusikannya di Internet atau media lain untuk kepentingan akademis tanpa perlu meminta ijin maupun memberikan royalty kepada saya selama tetap mencantumkan nama saya sebagai penulis.
Demikian pernyataan ini saya buat dengan sebenarnya. Dibuat di Yogyakarta
Pada tanggal :
Yang menyatakan
viii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I would like to thank my lecturers Dr. Patrisius Mutiara Andalas, S.J., Dr. Novita Dewi, M.S., M.A (Hons), Dr. Bagus Laksana, S.J., Ni Luh Putu Rosiandari, SS, M.Hum and Dr. F.X. Siswadi, M.A, who always trust my capability and never give up on me. I also would like to thank Rissa Egitia for introducing me toThe God of Small Thingsas she believes that it will meet my interests and capability, which is proven to be true.
I also would like to thank my parents, Rosalina Popy and Emanuel Mugiharja, and brother, Stephan Gilang, for the infinite trust and love. For my beloved cousin and best friend, Gaby Swastika, the one that is always there when I’m in need. The writing of this thesis will never be complete without the hours of discussions I follow with fellow students: Albertus Harimurti, Timoteus Anggawan Kusno, Wisnu Ari Tjokro, Malcolm Smith, Georgius Benardi, Irene, Heri, Linda, Nurcholis, Pinto, Wahono, Rahman, Martha, Riston, Andre, Elis, Bre, and many others who, in uncountable hours of laughter and love, have shared their thoughts and helped to expand mine.
I would also like to express my gratitude to my beautiful friends in the music and art scene for the creative distraction that preserves my sanity: Matias Sri Aditya, Latan Rizky, Dimas Dhyara, Wipti Eta, Tata Christiana,Wahyu Septian, Anindita Bramantyo, Rami Risky, Arif Kusuma, Uniph Kahfi, Prihatmoko Moki, Adelina Maryam, Wednes Mandra, Rangga Nashrullah, Indra Menus, Arie Mindblasting, Hendra Adityawan, Hilman Fathoni, Haryono, Kuntoro Adi, Made Dharma, Sean Stellfox, Irfan R. Darajat, Damar Sosondoro, Agung Hanifah, Hengga Tiyasa, Randy Surya Mukti, Wafiq Giotama, Sekar Handareni, Eka Jayani, Arkham Kurniadi, Sarra Oktaviya, Satya Prapanca, Rully Sabhara, Woto Wibowo, Syafiatudina, Dinda Advena, Natasha Tontey, Syaura Qotrunadha, Agung Kurniawan, Yustina Neni, and many, many others whose priceless companions I value the most. I also thank especially to Zacharias Szumer, for the love and comfort during the crucial moments of the writing. Also, thank you very much Beach Fossils and Sigur Ros.
Lastly, I would like to thank God, the infinite inspiration, that appears in the earth I walk on, in the air I breathe, in the faces of my beloved ones, in the pleasures and obstacles I encounter during the writing of this thesis, that never stops accompanying me in any thinkable and unthinkable forms. Thank you.
ix AMMU’S IDENTITY CATEGORIES AND THE LOVE LAW... 34
A. Caste and Class as Social Stratification... 38
1. Touchability and Untouchability in the Indian Caste System...40
2. Anglophilia in Post-Independence India...52
B. The Position of Syrian Christianity among Other Religious Groups in India ... .. 55
x
CHAPTER IV:
AMMU’S IDENTITY MARKERS AND TRANSGRESSION... 66
A. Childhood: Bravery as a Potential Transgressor... 68
B. Adolescence: Marriage as a Transgression... 71
C. Marriage: Authority to Her Own Body and Divorce as Transgression .... 75
D. Coming Back to Ayemenem: Transgressions from Family Values... 79
E. The Terror: Fornication as Transgression ... 89
F. Ammu’s Last Transgression... 99
G. The Abyss: Transgression and Punishment... 100
CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION... 105
WORKS CITED ... 110
xi
ABSTRACT
Gisela Swara Gita Andika. Breaking the Love Law: Identity and Transgression in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. Yogyakarta: Graduate Program on English Language Studies, Sanata Dharma University, 2015.
This thesis is a study on Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. The writing of the thesis is based on Roy’s statement that the core point of her novel is about biology and transgression. Thus, this thesis focuses on Ammu, a leading character, who struggles to reach her desire under the control of a set of restrictions namely the Love Law.
Using Feminist approach as the point of view from which the novel is examined, the thesis also uses several theories to explore this topic. A theory of kinship based identity is used to explore the restrictions that come along with her identity categories. Althusser’s concept of Ideological State Apparatuses is used to see the Love Law as an internalized ideology, as well as the interpellated society among which Ammu lives. Theory of subaltern is also used to see Ammu as a subaltern although she lives in a privileged family.
The study reveals that Ammu inherits the obligation to prolong her family’s good reputation due to the identity categories she also inherits from the family. The identity categories: her being a Syrian Christian, her being an Anglophile high-caste Indian, and her being a woman consequently put her inside a jail of restrictions from reaching the object of her desire. These boundaries functioned systematically just like a law, and is referred as the Love Law in the novel. After analyzing the Love Law, it is revealed that the Love Law has failed to express humanity values. Thus, it is concluded that the Love Law transgresses Ammu’s biology instead of Ammu transgressing the Love Law.
xii
ABSTRAK
Gisela Swara Gita Andika. Breaking the Love Law: Identity and Transgression in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. Yogyakarta: Graduate Program on English Language Studies, Sanata Dharma University, 2014.
Thesis ini mengkaji novel karya Arundhati Roy,The God of Small Things.Penulisan thesis ini didasari oleh pernyataan Roy sendiri bahwa intisari dari novelnya adalah mengenai dorongan biologis dan pelanggaran. Maka, thesis ini berfokus pada Ammu, seorang karakter utama, yang berjuang untuk memenuhi hasratnya di bawah kungkungan norma-norma dan larangan yang disebutLove Law.
Menggunakan pendekatan Feminis sebagai sudut pandang penalaran, thesis ini juga menggunakan beberapa teori untuk menyelami topik ini. Teori tentang identitas kekeluargaan digunakan untuk melihat larangan-larangan yang hadir bersama dengan kategori identitasnya. Konsep Ideological State Apparatuses oleh Althusser juga digunakan untuk melihat Love Law sebagai ideologi yang telah diinternalisasikan oleh masyarakat yang telah terinterpelasi, masyarakat di mana Ammu tinggal. Teori tentang subaltern juga digunakan untuk melihat Ammu sebagai subaltern walau ia berasal dari keluarga kelas atas.
Kajian ini menemukan bahwa Ammu mewarisi kewajiban ini akibat kategori-kategori identitas yang juga ia warisi dari keluarganya. Kategori-kategori identitasnya: keberadaannya sebagai seorang Kristen Siria, seorang India berkasta tinggi yang juga Anglofilia, juga keberadaannya sebagai seorang perempuan, menempatkannya dalam penjara berjeruji larangan-larangan yang menghalanginya dalam menggapai hasratnya. Larangan-larangan ini berfungsi secara sistematis seperti hukum, hukum yang di dalam novel ini disebut Love Law. Setelah menganalisa Love Law, terungkaplah bahwa Love Law adalah hukum yang telah gagal mengekspresikan nilai-nilai kemanusiaan. Maka, dapat disimpulkan bahwa Love Law-lah yang melanggar hasrat biologis Ammu, bukan Ammu yang melanggarLove Law.
CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION A. Background of the Study
After its publication in 1997,The God of Small Thingsgained global attention and put Arundhati Roy into the circle of world-class writers. The book received accolades for its richness and brilliance. Roy was noted especially for her bravery in presenting sensitive issues such as sexuality and social class discrimination. Moreover she served those issues in vivid descriptions of horrible traumatic scenes from children point of view. However the book also received many criticisms. Besides its verbose style of writing, Roy’s unfolding India’s cultural and social dark sides also enraged many readers (Glaister, The Guardian).
The God of Small Things focuses on the life of an honored family in a small village called Ayemenem in Kerala, India. The family, namely the Ipe family, is known as a religious Syrian Christian family. They are considered as charitable people who feed the poor of the lower caste. They are also respected as the owners of a successful pickle company that absorbs labour force from the neighboring area. The Ipe family is seen as a family of meritorious service for the village.
love affair with Velutha, a labour from the lowest caste in the society. Seen from this point of view, Ammu can be regarded as a harlot as well as the black sheep in a big respected family.
But is this perception of Ammu true? While the conflict of the whole novel focuses on her caste-breaking love affair that produces an earthquake to the ground-firm family reputation, Ammu’s desire as an individual is never questioned by her family. She is always seen as a member of the family who is responsible to prolong the family’s good reputation, regardless of her personal circumstances. Thus, Ammu’s attempts to reach her desire are always regarded as rebellion. Her attempt to escape a drunkard husband and her true love to a hard-labour man is seen far more disgusting than the domestic violence done by her father to her mother or than her brother’s affair with women labours from the family’s pickle factory.
Ammu’s difficult situation is the result of the collision between her individual biological forces with the set of restrictions that come with the identity categories she inherits from the family. In this thesis, Ammu’s position regarding her identity is investigated. For her love to her children and to Velutha, Ammu put her identity; as a woman, as a member of a privileged caste, and as a respected Syrian Christian; at stake. Does Ammu really commit a fatal transgression? Or is Ammu the one whose human rights have been transgressed by the system and order in the society, the ideology that is naively named Love Law in the novel?
as her capability in having personal desires, which then represents her whole existence as a human being with biological and psychological demands. How she tries to reach the objects of her desire under the controlling Love Law results transgression.
This thesis attempts to elaborate the identity Ammu inherits from the kinship she has with the Ipe family, and the Love Law she is bound to as the consequence of being in those identity categories. The Love Law is described as “…the law that lay down who should be loved, and how. And how much.” (p. 33) This thesis discusses how the Love Law controls the relationship between individuals in the society according to the identity categories they carry, the instruments of the Law, and the consequence of the transgressors.
B. Definition of Terms
1. Love Law and Ideological State Apparatuses
In the novel, Arundhati Roy frequently mentions The Love Law, as “…the law that lay down who should be loved, and how. And how much.” (p. 33). Despite its name that reflects a lovely character, The Love Law acts as a set of fierce regulation that controls the relationship between individuals in the society.
consciousness). These forms of consciousness then formulate ideology. Meanwhile, the function of ideology is to legitimate the power of the ruling class in the society. Therefore, the dominant ideas of a society are the ideas of its ruling class (Eagleton in Walder 208).
The superstructure controls the relationship between the classes. In Marx’s economy basis, it is the relationship between the capitalist class (those who owns the means of production) and the proletarian class (those whose labour power is bought by the capitalist to gain profit). The force and relation between these classes are calledbase,or the economic structure of the society (Eagleton in Walder 208).
2. Identity Categories and Identity Markers
According to Steph Lawler, a reader in Sociology at Newcastle University, the study of identity is based on the realization that the society consists of individuals with paradoxical combination of sameness and difference (Lawler 10). A person is not only identical with herself (being the same being from birth to death), but also identical with others.
As human beings, individuals share common identities in categories, such as ‘women’, ‘men’, ‘British’, ‘American’, ‘white’, ‘black’, etc. These categories are social categories and are formed in the basis of social divisions. In this study, these categories are used to see the identity layers in Ammu’s characterization.
In her book, Lawler argues that seeing a person in these categories reduces the essence of identity itself. Lawler believes that seeing a person’s identity, one must see identity as a work in progress rather than a finished product (Lawler 10). However, in seeing a character in a novel (whose characterization has been a finished product), such categorization is practical. Moreover, these categories can help see the restriction Ammu has to face as the consequence of having those identity categories.
Ammu’s identity categories that are put into focus in this thesis are her gender, her religion, and her class. This thesis focuses on her being a woman (especially as a daughter, a divorcee, and a single mother), a Syrian Christian, and a member of a respected high caste family in 1960s Keralla, India.
choice of dress, and actions are controlled by a set of regulation due to the ideals of each categories. For example, if a person is born female, she is expected to act lady-like, speak polite language, and dress prettily. In this case, Ammu’s choices of identity markers somehow deviate from the ideals of her categories. For example, her act of having a love affair with Velutha is considered an extreme violation of these ideal codes. In addition to that, she has gone through an identity change due to the change of relationship status. Her choice to divorce her husband and back to her parents’ house leads the society to stigmatize her. Her action violates the codes of her social class, religion, and gender regulation. In this case, she is seen to transgress the restrictions that come along with her identity.
C. Research Questions
The research is done according to the following questions as its basis:
1. How are Ammu’s identity categories and the Love Law elaborated in the story?
2. How are Ammu’s identity markers and transgression explained?
D. Research Objectives
India. In the same time, she is also seen as a female member of Syrian Christian church in Keralla. Using Althusser’s concept of ISA, the occurrence of Love Law as the consequence of her identity categories and its significance to her relationship with others are examined. In this part of the thesis, it is elaborated how Ammu supposedly acts within the society. A review on how the caste system and Syrian Christianity norms are effective in 1960s Keralla is also elaborated.
In the second part of the thesis, theories on identity are used to elaborate Ammu’s identity markers and how they transgress the Love Law. After understanding these matters, it can be seen why it is the Love Law that transgresses Ammu’s biology, instead of her transgressing the Love Law.
The research enriches the knowledge regarding notorious caste system as the class division in post-independence India, the position of Syrian Christianity within the contemporary Indian society, and the circumstances encountered by Indian women who live within such system. This thesis gives a glimpse on how the society responds to the complication and how it shapes their relationship to each other.
E. Object of the Study
The object of the study is Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things (1997). Known better as an activist, Arundhati Roy uses The God of Small Things as the medium to voice her concerns and activism instead of her artistic achievement (Barsamian, The Progressive).
upper-class family who runs a famous pickles factory, is also known as the descendants of a prominent Syrian-Christian priest in Ayemenem, Keralla. The gloom in their history peaked when Sophie, a little girl from London, was killed in an accident. The accident is only a scene from a chain of happenings in the world of the adults that are not understandable by the little children.
The important context that builds the universe of The God of Small Things
resembles that of Arundhati Roy’s childhood. She wrote
My father was a Hindu, a Brahmo. I never met him until I was an adult. I grew up with my mother in a Syrian Christian family in Ayemenem, a small village in communist-ruled Kerala. And yet all around me were the fissures and cracks of caste (Roy, “The Doctor” 3).
F. Method of the Study
The thesis is a result of a library research. The novel was examined through close reading, especially focusing on Ammu as a female character. In completing the study, data were gathered through the examination of essays, documentations, and articles found in books and internet sources.
G. Approach of the Study
The aim of this study is to question the perspective that puts Ammu in the position of the transgressor instead of the transgressed. This thesis is written under the assumption that Ammu is the victim of the given circumstance. Moreover, this thesis argues that Ammu uses her female characters to express her aspiration. Regarding this, Feminist approach is seen as the most adequate method to read the novel. The feminist approach enables the examination of Ammu’s desire. Using a feminist’s perspective, it is possible to see Ammu’s personal desires as a woman as worth-studying elements. By understanding her biological forces, Ammu’s choice of identity markers is examined. This approach is also adequate in examining Ammu’s position in the environment of post-independence India as well as in the Syrian-Christian family.
being born into the wrong sex that puts them in the inferior position from that of men. Such culture, namely the patriarchal culture, is organized in favor of men’s interests (Guerin et al 196). Simone de Beauvoir in the Introduction part of The Second Sex
argues that the role of women is socially constructed and defined in relation to men. Men are seen as the ‘Absolute’ while women are the ‘Other’ (qtd. In Walder 302). In patriarchal culture, men are the center while women’s identity is defined according to their position to the men. Feminist critics believe that literature can either reflect or challenge the patriarchal culture. In the case of Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, the patriarchal culture is reflected through the story as well as challenged through the legacy of the story in the real world.
Feminist critics believe that personal representations can exhibit powerful political orientation. They believe in diary literature and other personal writings to challenge the canon literature (Guerin et al 196-197). These personal works are the manifestation of women’s voice, the one that is so often silenced. Feminist critics believe in the very act of speaking, the act of having language, as a powerful weapon to challenge the patriarchal culture (Guerin et al 197).
position in race, class, culture, sexual orientation, age, and even period of history. These fields can be seen as identity categories that put a woman in her circumstance with others in the world.
H. Review of Related Studies
Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things was published in 1996 and received the Man Booker Prize in 1997. For over a decade, the book had been the corner stone to abundance of articles, theses, and even books. Google finds at least six studies that use the book as their object. Melani Budianta, in a short essay that she wrote as a preface to the Indonesian translated edition, also mentioned two post-graduate theses examining the novel.
However, one of the prominent characters of this novel is that it is a rich resource for academic discussions. Besides the detailed description of its narrative elements, the use of allusion and metaphors, unpredicted plot structure, and linguistic puns, the novel can be used in discussions of various topics. In her essay Melani Budianta mentioned some examples such as gender and sexuality studies; class, religion, ethnicity, and racial representation; cultural identity and post-colonial position; history and ideology; domestic violence to national unrest (p. xxiii, Indonesian edition). Below is the review of academic writings that read the novel using various perspectives.
style of the novel. Nababan studied the use of simile, metaphor, and comparison technique that makes the narration of the story has its own strong and unique character. The thesis was defended in 2000 in Universitas Indonesia.
In the same year, another Universitas Indonesia post-graduate student defended a thesis that focuses on The God of Small Things. Putting the novel in a post-colonial context, a post-graduate thesis entitled Anglofilia dalam The God of Small Things karya Arundhati Roy dan Dogeaters karya Jessica Hedgedorn
(Anglophile in The God of Small Thingsby Arundhati Roy andDogeatersby Jessica Hedgedorn) was written by Rahayu Puji Haryanti. The thesis focuses on how the Indian characters look up to the Englishness. Taking Chacko’s made up idiom “Anglophile”, this thesis examines on how Baby Kochamma and Kochu Maria idolizes Sophie, a nine year old London girl with brown hair and blue eyes; how the local communist leader, Comrade Pillai, teaches his six year old son to memorize Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar; and many other examples of indication that the colonized are still looking up to the colonizer.
transgression. In the thesis caste system is seen in its relation to Velutha and Ammu’s forbidden relationship; Estha and Rahel’s ruined childhood that leads to a practice of incest in their adulthood; and the trauma experienced by other Ipe family that causes different bitter futures.
A study that focused on trauma as portrayed in the novel was also done by an American scholar, Sarah Young Longworth, that wrote “Trauma and the Ethical Dilemma in Arundhati Roy’sThe God of Small Things” to earn her master degree in 2006 from the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. Longforth focused on how Roy’s narrative technique can elaborate the trauma and ethical dilemma as experienced by the characters. She argues that as a trauma narrative, the novel is best read as a warning that the society can perpetuate trauma, make it as an inevitable experience for individuals, and thus, each person’s future is unique and therefore cannot be predetermined. Longworth suggests that the controversial scenes in the novel e.g. the twins’ incest, are not to be seen as Roy’s either pessimistic or optimistic attitude towards trauma and ethical dilemma as happening in the society.
and communicate to one another through customs and tradition. In the thesis, Stockdale examine the clever and ironically humorous use of Malayalam and English as is put to the tongues of the characters in the novel.
The novel is also fruitful while studied in the feminism point of view. Golam Gaus Al-Quaderi, an associate professor at the Department of English, University of Dhaka, Dhaka, Bangladesh, collabourated with Muhammad Saiful Islam, a lecturer at the Department of English, King Khalid University, Abha, Saudi Arabia, in writing a 17 pages long essay on the novel. Entitled “Complicity and Resistance: Women in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things”, the essay was published by Journal of Postcolonial Cultures and Societies by December 2011.
The essay focuses on the female characters in the novel that is said to represent the agents of struggle for change. Quaderi and Islam focused on Ammu, Mammachi, Baby Kochamma and Rahel and their actions within patriarchy, class, caste, and feudal-capitalist economic structure.
In the essay, the women are seen to unconsciously rebel against the social systems in their own way. Regardless their unsuccessful effort and the fierce punishment they have to endure, the women followed their instincts and make decisions and actions that, in their own way, represent the voice of the oppressed trying to get a better life.
January 2011 in the English Literature School, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Högskolani Gävle, in Gävle, Sweden. In her thesis, Olsson compares how three female characters in the novel: Ammu, Baby Kochamma, and Mamachi, react differently towards the male hero, Velutha. Her thesis is that Roy depicts diverse representation of subaltern women in the ‘Third World’. Olsson argued that Roy has designed her female characters to display agency and thus, despite their oppressed and marginalized status, are responsible for their own actions and decisions.
In Hong Kong, CHAN Wing Yi Monica defended “A Stylistic Approach to
The God of Small Things” in 2007 to earn Master of Philosophy degree from Lingnan University. In her thesis, she uses Leech and Short’s theory to analyze the novel stylistically. She focused on three linguistic aspects that Roy used in writing the novel: (1) Lexis, in which Roy frequently and particularly utilized adjectives throughout the novel; (2) Grammar, in which Roy used minor sentences and noun phrases to create certain effect to the reader; and (3) Figures of speech, in which Roy used neologism and repetition to freely create new words with new meanings. In the later part of her thesis, CHAN Wing Yi Monica relates the novel with a pastiche entitled “Hong Kong Locust Stand I”.
and the influence of the Love Law in contemporary India, this thesis has a legitimate existence in literary studies.
I. Significance of the Study
The initial attempt in writing of this thesis adapts that of the writing of the novel itself. Roy, in her interview with David Barsamian (The Progressive), implies that The God of Small Things is one of her tools to convey her political statements about the injustice in India. For her, storytelling can be a strong medium to convey political statements. She stated:
It's very important for me to tell politics like a story, to make it real… The God of Small Things is a book where you connect the very smallest things to the very biggest: whether it's the dent that a baby spider makes on the surface of water or the quality of the moonlight on a river or how history and politics intrude into your life, your house, your bedroom (qtd. in Barsamian, The Progressive).
homes and livelihoods of millions of the poor and Untouchables living in the area. She remarked:
Many of the worst affected by the project are tribal people and poor, low-caste farmers called Dalits, many of whom have already been forced out of ancestral lands into refugee camps with little compensation (qtd. in Barsamian, The Progressive).
Furthermore, she sees her experience of being jailed with many other women in Tiharas as an evident that the system in India victimizes women and force them to be convicts. She met some other prisoners that were there for killing their husbands, drugs, and prostitutions. Roy sees that these prisoners were transgressors that were forced to commit the crimes by the circumstances of their lives.
It is clear that Roy’s activism is to fight for freedom of speech in India. She is moved by the sufferings of the marginalized, which in India are the Untouchables and the women. Even today, being a woman in India is dangerous. Crimes against women such as dowry murder, domestic violence, acid throwing, gang-rape, and female infanticide are easily identified with Indian patriarchal culture. Just to give voice or to speak her mind is a luxury to many Indian women.
many of her thoughts that then illuminated her initiative to write The God of Small Thingsin the first place.
In the essay he comments that caste system is applied as a fierce and strict regulation in Ayemenem, though it is not mentioned in formal education and in school textbooks. About the caste system in her hometown, she remarked
Ayemenem had its own separate “Paraiyar’ church where Paraiyar’ priests preached to an ‘Untouchable’ congregation. Caste was implied in peoples’ names, in the way people referred to each other, in the work they did, in the clothes they wore, in the marriages that were arranged, in the language we spoke. Even so, I never encountered the notion of caste in a single school textbook (“The Doctor” 3).
Caste system and how it affects the life of the Untouchables, force them to live as if they are not fellow human beings, has enraged Roy.
CHAPTER II
THEORETICAL REVIEW
This chapter gives a view on the theoretical framework used in analyzing the novel. The theories used are the theory of identity, theory of transgression, theory of Ideological State Apparatuses, and theory of subaltern.
A. Theory of Identity
In the study of literature, investigation on the character’s identity is a common theme. Novels that raise issues such as post-colonialism, gender, and race, commonly increase the tense of their plot when the characters are in a conflict between who they are and who they are supposed to be. According to Steph Lawler inIdentity,there is a tendency to cast identity as something to be considered only when it is in trouble. Often, one’s identity becomes a significant cause of conflict only when it is in crises; in which people are not quite sure who they are (1). She also states that there is a tendency to notice change, rather than continuity, of someone’s identity (47).
be (Lawler 8). In shaping a person’s ego identity, one attaches a set of identity markers to differentiate one’s self from the other.
Social identity categories include a person on social groups such as race, gender, nation, age, sexuality, bodily ability, etc (Lawler 8). These categories are normative and ideological. Within a person, identity categories are in perpetual negotiation between his or her own subjectivity (Lawler 9). This thesis believes that Ammu is born into a certain set of identity categories that she ascribes from her kinship with her family. How a person’s identity is understood in terms of what is genetically inherited is called genetic determinism (Lawler 45). Genetic determinism may come with several obligations as the consequence. Lawler states,
In referring to ‘kinship’ here, I am not referring simply to the doing of familial relationship... but to a whole network of ties which may or may not be characterized as ‘blood ties’, which typically involve various conceptualizations of relationships and which may ... involve various obligations (46).
B. Theory of Transgression
Arundhati Roy once remarked that transgression is one key point of the novel. Ammu’s transgression as the resistance towards the Love Law that has been internalized in the society is an important point of the chains of happenings that keep the plot going.
To transgress, according to Chris Jenks inTransgression (2003), is more than just to violate or to infringe. To violate or to infringe means to go beyond the bounds or limits set by a commandment or law or convention. But transgression includes the work of ideology and reflexive act.
…to go beyond the bounds or limits set by a commandment or law or convention, it is to violate or infringe. But to transgress is also more than this, it is to announce and even laudate the commandment, the law or the convention. Transgression is a deeply reflexive act of denial and affirmation. Analytically, then, transgression serves as an extremely sensitive vector in assessing the scope, direction and compass of any social theory, as we shall see (2).
On the other hand, her rage affirms her own ideology that submits to the wants of her biology as a woman.
According to Jenks, society becomes the playground for transgressors. When individuals live with each other, limitations become everyday experience. According to Jenks
Constraint is a constant experience in our action, it needs to be to render us social. Interestingly enough, however, the limits to our experience and the taboos that police them are never simply imposed from the outside; rather, limits to behaviour are always personal responses to moral imperatives that stem from the inside. This means that any limit on conduct carries with it an intense relationship with the desire to transgress that limit (7).
between the core of social life and the periphery, the center and the margins, identity and difference, the normal and the deviant, and the possible rules that could conceivably bind us into a collectivity (Jenks 5). Therefore, what is normal and what is deviant somehow collide in a blur line, and the debate of their differentiation is perpetual.
According to Jenks, simple societies express their moral boundaries through mythologies. Recent societies, however, have celebrated the magnetic antipathy between order and excess by getting through many periods of philosophy (7). The possibility of continuing process of these periods occur with the help of transgressors of any generation that perpetually challenging to break boundaries and setting up new limitation according to their own perspective. Transgression, therefore, is a part of social process, as well as a part of individual psyche (197).
A transgression, however, cannot be measured (Jenks 175). A transgression cannot be valued as greater, less, better, or worse. It is tangible only if it is materialized by the public as celebrated or cursed moments. Jenks gives examples of Nazi Holocaust and September 11th. When a transgression assumes tangibility, having texture, and clear significance, it becomes criminalized. The transgressor, for example Ammu in the novel, becomes a monster (Jenks 190).
society, considered as the transgressor? On what basis does a system in the society transgress the limitation of one’s biology?
C. Theory of Ideological State Apparatuses
The Love Law, the Law that lay down who should be loved, and how, and how much, is frequently mentioned in the novel (pg. 17, 84, 111, etc). Arundhati Roy had simplified such a complex system of society into a poetic term with its ironic values. In the novel the Law is a set of fierce regulation that controls the relationship between individuals in the society. When it is transgressed, the punishment may be severe. Velutha, for instance is dead in an abject death under the ruthless hands of the police. Ammu is banished from Ayemenem House, dies alone in a discreditable lodge, and is cremated as an unnamed person since the Syrian Christian Church refuses to gives her a proper funeral. How can such a system be internalized within a society, tearing families, and systematically murdering people in the cruel hands of fellow human beings?
State, in order to keep the reproduction of labour force going on, have two kinds of apparatuses: Repressive State Apparatuses (RSA), and Ideological State Apparatuses (ISA). These apparatuses, both repressively and ideologically, gives false consciousness to the labour force to make sure that the labour force (the individuals in the society) is there to be exploited by the production system, without noticing that they are being exploited.
To put this more scientifically, I shall say that the reproduction of labour power requires not only a reproduction of its skills, but also, at the same time, a reproduction of its submission to the rules of the established order, i.e. a reproduction of submission to the ruling ideology for the workers, and a reproduction of ability to manipulate the ruling ideology correctly for the agents of exploitation and repression, so that they, too, will provide for the domination of the ruling class ‘in words’ (131).
According to Althusser, RSA are public institutions that are legitimate to work violently in order to make the people follow the rules. Examples of RSA are the Government, the Administration, the Army, the Police, the Courts, the Prison etc (142-143). These institutions, although function mostly by violence, also function with injection of ideology.
I shall call Ideological State Apparatuses a certain number of realities which present themselves to the immediate observer in the form of distinct and specialized institutions:
The religious ISA (the system of the different Churches)
The educational ISA (the system of the different public and private ‘Schools’)
The family ISA
The legal ISA (law functions as repressive and ideological) The political ISA (the political system, including the different parties)
The trade-union ISA
Therefore, it can be said that the basic difference between RSA and ISA is that the RSA functions primarily by violence while ISA functions primarily by ideology (145).
Althusser believes that ISA function massively and predominantly by ideology, but they also function secondarily by repression, even if ultimately, but symbolic. Althusser believes that there is no such thing as a purely ideological state apparatus, nor purely repressive state apparatus (143).
InThe God of Small Things, the Love Law is assumed to be the ISA that has interpellated the society to keep their life going the way it is. According to Althusser, Ideology interpellates individuals and turns them into subjects.
All ideology hails or interpellates concrete individuals as concrete subjects... I shall then suggest that ideology ‘acts’ or ‘functions’ in such a way that it ‘recruits’ subjects among the individuals (it recruits them all), or ‘transforms’ the individuals into subjects (it transforms them all) (173-174).
by that very precise operation which i have called interpellation or hailing, and which can be imagined along the lines of the most commonplace everyday police (or other hailing): ‘Hey, you there!” ...
The hailed individual will turn round, he becomes a subject. Why? Because he has recognize that the hail was ‘really’ addressed to him, and that it was really him who was hailed (173-174).
Subject formation is important in ideology interpellation. It injects the ideology deep in the individuals and makes them manifest the ideology in their very everyday activity.
But to recognize that we are subjects and that we function in the practical rituals of the most elementary everyday life (the hand-shake, the act of calling you by your name, the fact of knowing, even if I do not know what it is, that you ‘have’ a name of your own, which means that you are recognized as a unique subject, etc.) –this recognition only gives us the ‘consciousness’ i.e. it’s recognition –but in no sense does it give us the (scientific) knowledge of the mechanism of this recognition(173).
the hard-labor job without complaining, make sure that the children of Touchable Syrian Christian enjoy education at Touchable schools, and make sure that the women cook the food for the household and give sexual pleasure to the men. Any deviation from the ideology forces the repressive side of the apparatuses to punish the deviant. Seen through classic Marxist, the ideology is criticized in the way that it makes man become the slave of his own products by the subsumption of labour under capital (Elsjer 181).
D. Theory of Subaltern
In the study of post-colonialism, the term hegemony and subaltern are frequently used. This thesis, however, borrows the term from the post-colonial study because Ammu’s fate resembles that of the oppressed people of the colonized country.
There is no doubt, however, that the analogy is very close to seeing the novel as a post-colonial one as it is set in the post-independence India. The difference is that in this thesis, Ammu is seen as an individual that does not have the privilege to “speak” as she is oppressed by her surroundings that is already interpellated by the Love Law.
project, triggered by Spivak’sCan the Subaltern Speak?In 1988, is purposed to write the history from below, meaning to give voice to the oppressed group that cannot speak their aspiration of their life. According to J.C. Young in Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction, being a subaltern means to be in the lower class or in the social groups that are in the margins of a society. To be included in the group of subaltern means being a person without agency due to his or her social status (10).
Spivak loosely borrowed the term subaltern from Gramsci in Can the Subaltern Speakto discuss the story ofsati.Insati,Indian widows attempt to commit suicide by throwing themselves to the cremation fire of their deceased husbands. This tradition was considered to be an obligatory in some rural Indian areas as an act to show deep sorrow of losing the supreme male of the house. English colonizers, however, tried to stop this practice as it was not in accordance to Western humanity values.
In raising this issue, Spivak was not advocating the suicide for sacrifice. Instead, she underlined the fact that neither the British nor the Indian asked the widows’ perspective. The story was told, either in the voice of white males or Indian males. The female’s perspective was never been put into consideration. In her opinion, these unheard voices are the true subaltern.
According to Spivak, the link to the struggle of the subaltern is simply the desire. In arguing this, she refers to the study of psychoanalysis. She elaborated the chaining relation between desire, object, fixed subject, and repression. According to Spivak, it is either the subject that lacks desire or the desire that lacks a fixed subject. Whereas, there will be no fixed subject except by repression (68). Therefore, repression creates the machine to produce desire, and it is the burning fuel for transgression of the subaltern. This is in accordance to Ammu’s desire that leads her to transgress the boundaries of the Love Law.
E. Theory of Mimicry
Born as an Indian, Bhaba witnessed and interacted with colonized Indians who adapt the Englishness in order to achieve higher level of identity. According to Bhaba, this phenomenon occurs not as an attempt to minimize difference and gain peace with the colonizers, instead, it is a form of resemblance that acts as a camouflage, so that the colonized that mimics the colonizer feels to be at the same class as the colonizer. Bhaba elaborates mimicry’s position as a camouflage in the following quotation:
In mimicry, the representation of identity and meaning is rearticulated along the axis of metonymy. As Lacan reminds us, mimicry is like camouflage, not a harmonization of repression of difference, but a form of resemblance, that differs from or defends presence by displaying it in part, metonymically. Its threat, I would add, comes from the prodigious and strategic production of conflictual, fantastic, discriminatory ‘identity effects’ in the play of a power that is elusive
because it hides no essence, no ‘itself’ (90)
.
CHAPTER III
AMMU’S IDENTITY CATEGORIES AND THE LOVE LAW
As elaborated in the previous chapter, this thesis discusses a crisis that a person encounters when her identity is questioned. In this case, Ammu Ipe faces a crisis when she is faced with the question of her identity as an Indian woman, a Touchable, and a respected Syrian Christian. This chapter aims to elaborate the portrait of the society that lives within the Love Law: the society that practices the Law of Untouchability and the social stratification in the model of caste, the society that is gender-based, and at the same time a religious society that has various branch of Christianity in the Hindu cultural framework. This portrait is needed so that Ammu’s situation regarding her identity categories: her caste and class, gender, and religion, the identity categories that she ascribes by birth, are made clear.
Nobody can choose to whom they are born. Ammu is born to Ipe family, a respected Syrian Christian family in Kerala, India. From her relatedness with the family Ammu receives her identity. This relatedness consequently obliges Ammu to act and make choices according to what is expected from a female member of a respected Syrian Christian family. Seen this way, Ammu’s identity is genetically determined. Genetic determinism happens when identities are understood in terms of what is genetically inherited.
typically involve various conceptualizations of relationship. Kinship, especially the family, is an important means to transmit material and cultural privileges. The family also constitutes the regulation of sexuality, rules of inheritance, the placing or creation of children, and so on (49).
Lawler agrees that familial relatedness naturally brings ties to individuals, “…but it also bound up with what people make of those ties” (48). It means that although an individual is born to a certain identity category she inherits from the family, she still can make up her own identity according to her own preferences. However, these preferences bring consequences if the person deviates from what is expected from the similarities she has with her kin. From her family, Ammu inherits high caste status as a Touchable, Syrian Christian as her religion, and being a woman as her gender.
These identity categories bound Ammu with obligations and a set of regulations that restrict Ammu from fulfilling her biology (biology here is a poetic term made by Roy to represent biological and psychological needs, as well as humanly desires). The Love Law is seen to function in similar ways with the ideological state apparatuses within a society, as the system that controls the relationship between individuals. The Love Law is considered crucial in the story, as it is emphasized using frequent repetition of the same sentence as seen in page 17, 84, 111, 152, and many more.
stratification, gendered views that tend to be patriarchal and religious tradition that have been internalized within the members of the society controls the individuals. This circumstance, at its turn, enables the reproduction of the relation of productions within the cultural system.
The characters in the novel that submit to the Love Law have internalized the values of the Love Law and accepted it as the only way to live their lives. They do not feel that the Law incriminate their biological instincts, nor do they think that the Law has failed to express humanity values.
According to Althusser, ISA works in such a way that the individuals are subjected.
I shall then suggest that ideology ‘acts’ or ‘functions’ in such a way that it ‘recruits’ subjects among the individuals (it recruits them all), or ‘transforms’ the individuals into subjects (it transforms them all) by that very precise operation which I have called interpellation or hailing, and which can be imagined along the lines of the most commonplace everyday police (or other) hailing: ‘Hey, you there!’ (Althusser in Adams and Searle 1304).
According to Tickel, the Love Law consists of the mixture between the traditional Indian legacy with Marxism and Syrian Christianity (9). These values first infiltrate India in order to share the value of liberation. Ironically, at last when these values have been absorbed into the society, they function similarly as the boundaries and rules that govern the people’s way of life. The formation of the Love Law can be seen from the following quotation from the novel.
Equally, it could be argued that it actually began thousands of years ago. Long before the Marxists came. Before the British took Malabar, before the Dutch Ascendency, before Vasco da Gama arrived, before the Zamorin’s conquest of Calicut. Before three purple-robed Syrian bishops murdered by the Portuguese were found floating in the sea, with coiled sea serpents riding on their chests and oysters knotted in their tangled beards. It could be argued that it began long before Christianity arrived in a boat and seeped into Kerala like tea from a teabag. That it really began in the days when the Love Laws were made (p. 17).
Below is the elaboration of the identity categories and how it brings the consequence of being the ideological state apparatuses in the society.
A. Caste and Class as Social Stratification
For a certain society, stratification may be a significant and distinct feature that determines the life of its members. According to Gerald D. Barreman in his essay “Race, Caste, and Other Invidious Distinctions in Social Stratification” (compiled in
Race & Class, 1972), stratification has been described as being based upon three primary dimensions: class, status, and power. The class one’s belong to may be seen from one’s wealth. One’s status may be seen from one’s prestige. While one’s level of power may be seen from one’s ability in controlling the lives of people, namely oneself and others (385).
Something over which the individual generally has no control, which is determined at birth, which cannot be changed, which is shared by all these of like birth, which is crucial to social identity and which vitally affects one’s opportunities, rewards, and social roles (386).
Futher more, Barreman explained the features of birth-ascribed status as follows: (a) The identity is regarded as being a consequence of birth or ancestry and hence immutable, (b) the identity confers upon its possessor a degree of socially defined and affirmed with which is regarded as intrinsic to the individual, (c) this inherent worth is evaluated relative to that of all others in the society –those of different birth are inherently unequal and are accordingly adjudged superior or inferior, while those regarded as being similar birth are innately equal (386).
In this part of the thesis, caste and class is discussed in the same section because in this case, caste shows as an adequate model of social class in the original Indian framework. The Ipe family as The Touchables and the the Anglophiles are the owner of production means. They are also the people who occupy the cultural capital and therefore become the people in the top of the stratification. Below is the elaboration of the social stratification based on the Untouchability Law and the notion of Anglophilia.
1. The Touchability and Untouchability in the Indian Caste System
In writing the story, Arundhati Roy divides the story into two major caste groups: the Untouchables and the Touchables. This style is an irony used to point out the racial discrimination practiced in the context. She refers to Ambedkar’s
Annihilation of Castefor the use to the term. She argues
For a writer to have to use terms like ‘Untouchable’, ‘Scheduled Y'aste’ (SC), ‘Backward Class’ (BC) and ‘Other Backward Classes' (OBC) to describe fellow human beings is like living in a hamber of horrors. Since Ambedkar used the word ‘Untouchable’ with a cold rage, and without flinching, so must I (Roy “The Doctor” 20).
caste system has been one the most prominent features of Indian culture. Roy portrayed the application of these strictures in the following passage:
Mammachi told Estha and Rahel that she could remember a time, in her girl hood, when Paravans were expected to crawl backwards with a broom, sweeping away their footprints so that Brahmins or Syrian Christians would not defile themselves by accidentally stepping into a Paravan’s footprint. In Mammachi’s time, Paravans, like other Untouchables, were not allowed to walk on public roads, not allowed to cover their upper bodies, not allowed to carry umbrellas. They had to put their hands over their mouths when they spoke, to divert their polluted breath away from those whom they addressed (p. 35).
Arundhati Roy mentioned this kind of taboo in the book as the Crawling Backwards Days, when certain outcasts have to sweep their own footprints while they walk so that people from higher caste will not step into it and therefore be polluted (p. 36). Although dramatized in the fictional story, the system is real and has become the way of life of Indian people for centuries.
...a collection of families or groups of families bearing a common name; claiming a common descent from a mythical ancestor, human or divine; professing to follow the same hereditary calling; and regarded by those who are competent to give an opinion as forming a single homogeneous community (s47).
Furthermore, Hutton noted two main characteristics of a caste as follows: (a) Membership is confined to those who are born of members, and includes all persons so born; (b) The members are forbidden by an inexorable social law to marry outside the group (48).
or castes of greater or less dignity, holding the Christians as of lower degree, and keep them so superstitiously that no one of a higher caste can eat or drink with those of a lower (Hutton 47).”
Caste is sometimes confused with varna. The caste system that controls the
jati groups has been applied in the Indian subcontinent even before the Aryans invasion (Rig Vedic era). Meanwhile, the concept of varna is applied by Rig Vedic society that ideally represents a fourfold division of society into classes: Brahman
(priests), Kshatriya/Rajanya (rulers, nobles, fighters), Vaishya (people generally, ordinary householders), and Sudra (the servile classes). Brahmans, Kshatriya, and
Vaishyaare the group ofvarnathat are spoken as the twice born (dvija). Being twice born means to be ceremonially reborn and assume the sacred thread (Hutton 65).
Sudras,at the other hand, are not allowed to do this ceremony. Bhagwan Das, in his essay, “Scheduled Castes and Nation Building”, noted that the myth containing the emergence of these varnas is The Purusha Sukta in the Rig Veda (Das in Kananaikil 12).
2). Jews, Christians, and Muslims in India often form caste or bodies analogous to castes. Generally speaking, Muslims and Christians are regarded as inferior to Brahmans and Nayars in Malabar, but less polluting than the lower castes.
However, Syrian Christians in Cochin and Travancore seem to have ranked as equal, if not superior to Nayars (Hutton 83). Perhaps, it is because the Syrian Christians today claim themselves to be the descendants of the Brahmans that were converted by St. Thomas the Apostle during his mission in 1 century AD. Caste system works in descendant lines, therefore although they are no longer Hindu, they are still considered high caste because their ancestors were placed at the top of the stratification system. Meanwhile, the contemporary Jewish society is the descendant of ancient Jewish refugees that claimed to have been in south India at least since the Roman destruction of Jerusalem (Hutton 14), which means they are not the descendant of native Indians and therefore have nojati.
Ancestry and blood ties are a key point to caste system. It is very rarely that a person managed to mobile within the stratification to a higher level. As familial relation is significant in maintaining the privileges as high caste, marriage is controlled in tight strictures. As it is clear that members of a caste cannot marry members of other caste, endogamy is a common practice. Otherwise, very often a man or woman marrying into a caste which is definitely recognized as inferior in status will be received into the caste of her spouse (Hutton 64).
(marrying a person of a higher caste), as their relation to husbands influence their social status. Consequently, one result of hypergamy is the distinct dowry system, in which the bride pays the price for the bridegroom instead of the other way around (Hutton 54).
This strict marriage system, according to Hutton, is the effect of the food and drink taboo instead of the cause of it (71). It is important for a man to be able to eat the food cooked by his own household. Who cooks the food is one of other significant elements in defining the cleanliness of the food. Cooking process is controlled in rigid strictures. Even a stranger’s shadow, or even a mere glance of a man of a low caste falling on the cooking pot may necessitate throwing away the contents (72). Drinking water is also bound by taboo strictures. A person of high caste cannot receive water from the hands of those lower than him. Therefore to make sure that the drinking water distributed in public is not polluted, the water distributors at railway stations are always Brahmans so that anyone can accept water poured out by them (75). Brahman, being at the top of stratification, is the clean caste. Thus, one test of clean caste is whether or not a Brahman can accept drinking water at the person’s hand (71). A caste recognized as clean by Brahman will be similarly recognized as such by other castes (72).
Hutton summarizes the system as follows:
caste; there are fixed occupations for many castes; there is some hierarchical gradation of castes, the best recognized position being that of the Brahman at the top; birth determines a man’s caste for life unless he be expelled for violation of its rules; otherwise transition from one caste to another is not possible; the whole system turns on the prestige of the Brahman (49).
The caste system is on the notion of purity. Their concept of purity is bounded to both spiritual and bodily cleanliness. Therefore, those whose occupation is considered “dirty”, for example the sweepers and funeral officials, are bound to certain restrictions in making interaction with those of other castes. As many castes are defined by occupation and kinship, it is common that the children do the same occupation as their parents’ and thus stay Untouchable as they do the same “dirty” professions.
The pollution carried by the Untouchables can be transferred through bodily contact, food and drink, shared smoking pipe, body liquid, breath, and even existence within certain distance. The distance pollution can be significantly obscure that even a mere glance, cast of shadow, and footprints of an Untouchable can defile the purity of a high caste. Events such as childbirth, monthly period, and death are also sources of taboo. Hutton noted some examples as follows:
fear of polluting a passerby who might all knowing tread where they had spat... Vedan pollutes the road while he is upon it. Pulayan pollutes the road by which he has gone (81).
Hutton also mentioned some examples of breath, shadow, and menstrual taboo as follows:
Low cast man at a temple must wear a bandage over mouth and nose lest his breath pollute the idol... A Kudumi woman in her menstrual period must keep 7 feet away from anyone, cover her mouth and nostrils with her hand and take care that her shadow falls on no one (83).
That a mere puff of breath, cast of shadow, and existence can defile others, it is clear that touching is one of the most common transfer of pollution. Bodily contact is sometimes inevitable and the members of higher caste will have to do rituals in order to clean themselves. The ritual can involve thorough body washing, disposal of clothing that one wears when one was touched, and praying. However, Hutton note that sometimes the consequence can affect the lifetime of a person, for example if a Nayar woman is touched by a Pulayan, she will be outcast for life and “...think only of leaving her home for fear of polluting her family (78).”
therefore doubly polluting, have to work between midnight and daybreak and are not allowed to come out during the daytime because the very sight of them was polluting (81).
However, strictures regarding the caste stratification are not only to control the pollution distribution. Clothing, housing, and language use are more to the privilege of the Touchables. The twice born castes are more flexible in choosing garments, ornaments, and articles to show luxury in public. Even the wearing of clothes above the waist was formerly a privilege of the twice born caste. On the other hand, the Untouchables are prohibited to wear gold or silver ornaments, umbrellas, and even shoes. Hutton also mention the restrictions of language in Malabar coast as follows:
Untouchables are also restricted in building luxurious houses. Not only that it is not allowed by the Touchables, but also the other Untouchables will soon pull it down (87).
Sanctions can be fierce to the Untouchables that are failed to observe the prohibitions and strictures. Often, it results in violence. For example, a punishment for Sudra who mentions the name and class of the twice born without honors is to be thrusted with a ten fingers long red hot iron nail. For a Sudra who “...teaches Brahmans their duty,” hot oil will be poured into his mouth and into his ears (93).
However, there is no reciprocal punishment for cantankerous Brahmans. The Code of Manu even says that a king shall never execute a Brahman though “...convicted of all possible crimes.” However, a Brahman may be banished by a king “...with all his property secure and his body unhurt (93).” The society believes that there is no greater crime known on earth than slaying a Brahman. A Brahman, be he ignorant or learned, is a great divinity.
